Q&A: HP ProCurve CTO Paul Congdon: Page 12 of 12

The last area would be managing the sprawl -- the scalability of Layer 2. What's the new architecture for my data center backbone in order to give me the kind of scalability that I'm going to want? Are spanning trees going to do it for me? Do I need to go Layer 3, closer to the edge? At some point people are going to be looking at upgrading their backbones, as we increase the performance out at the edge, and as that in turn puts a little more pressure on the backbone.

NetworkComputing: As we close, let's talk about ProCurve.

Congdon: There's an architectural message, which is the adaptive edge architecture. Fundamentally, what ProCurve is all about is bringing complex solutions into the mainstream. Our value proposition to customers has not changed in many years. We're not about being the cheap solution, but we are about making the advanced solutions affordable.

The change we're in right now is a very powerful one. We are a critical component provider to the rest of HP solutions. We're in that position because we earned it; it wasn't because of a de facto 'I have to use an HP piece in my solution.' I spend quite a bit of my time working with other parts of the company internally and driving these solutions forward.

One of the key things about HP, especially Enterprise Network Services, is we have a lot of ways we reach customers and go to market. We're allowing customers to choose how they want their IT services delivered. Some people buy the products and manage them themselves. Some people have outsourced to EDS or service providers. [EDS was acquired by HP and is now HP Enterprise Services -- ed.] Some people go for cloud. Everyone's all along the service spectrum.